They were jealous?
http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/epic-fail-stolen-mail-fail.jpg

I love our little Toyota. This is my third one — a ’76 Corolla, an ’83 Corolla and now our ’92 Paseo. My first two cars were manual transmission, which I adored and still miss sometimes.

And yes, it’s very very good to be able to laugh at things. For a while earlier this year I thought I’d lost that, but it turns out it was just off in a corner. It’s nice to have it back.

And Toyotas rule.

Now all this could have been bad, as Medicare refuses to pay for most of my care and I have to shell out $600 a month out of the $800 a month I make on SSDI if I want to be remotely functional. Luckily, my disabled friend’s secretarial aide is going back to college, so that job opened up and I fell right into it. We’ll be making about the same amount a month for slightly fewer hours, with some overtime here and there – a much better deal in the long run. We really do lead a charmed life . . .

The nice thing about all this is that our body and brain have healed enough that we can once again laugh at adversity. We thought we’d lost that ability. It’s nice to have it back.

Our most recent fun-with-tires incident happened when an archaeology workshop classmate picked up a nail. She had no idea how to change a tire and I’m not strong enough to anymore, but I stayed to help her because I can direct just fine. Which was good, because classmate #2 put the first jack in the wrong place but had already removed the tire by the time we saw the mistake. We couldn’t put the car back down, so we had to raid my car for a second jack. Brain damage or no, we were the only party who saw the solution. It’s nice to still be smart once in awhile.

The laugh out of all this was that somehow on her way to the archaeology workshop, the classmate had picked up a nail dating to ca. 1860. Some people will do anything to show off for the teacher .

Black-box means that I am in a part of the process that is not rational and not “force-able.” I have to trust that parts of the story that seem inaccessible to me are actually coming together.

One of the hardest things to explain to newer artists is that things take as long as they take, and that going “faster” is not in and of itself a worthy goal. Sometimes time itself — sitting with the work, letting it find its own breadth and depth — is part of the essential success. But you’re an accomplished artist yourself, so you know that. Impatience is not our friend. But wow, it sure can make a person restless, no?